Hi Hank! Automotive paint raw material specialist here, it feels like you made this video specifically for me 😁 You did some great deductions of figuring out the lack of metallic flake giving the "Nardo" feeling. I can maybe give you some more details into *why* automotive companies started going that way. #1 Cost: Metallic flakes are typically from aluminum sources, which can be difficult to source cheaply and reliably. Rising aluminum prices means that by removing them from the paint formulations, you save more money. #2 Complexity: Aligning the metallic flakes to achieve maximum sparkle is HARD. Seriously, it's like witchcraft and physics had a baby with how we figured out how to spray paint out of a rotating nozzle, get it to adhere to the coating layer, and also lay flat to reflect light in the best way. Any number of chemistry or physics related things can go wrong with the coating to make it not work the way you want it to. I bet there were a lot of issues making a new generation coating that flake was causing, so R&D just said, "screwing, we'll make it without any flake" #3 Customers: Some people genuinely like the softer, pastel looking subtleness of the "Nardo" colors. Ultimately we make paint for people to buy them, so customers get the final say in what succeeds in the market. You brought up a great point of culture shifts looking for something "new, but the same". Flake has become pretty standardized in most vehicles that Nardo really gives the feeling of it being the same color, but different. We deal with more than just the color as a physical wavelength, but also as a psychological perception.
Bring back glitter! I own an orange car now because it was the only non putty option that wasn’t hi vis yellow. Also, why so many colors with gray bases? Minimalism is dead. People want color!
As a nail polish wearer, these colour/finish trends happen all the time and I had noticed this and thought "Ohhh cars are doing THAT now" in nail polish land we call it cremè colour when there's no metallic/sparkle and the colour is dense rather than sheer.
Yeah so turns out imma need like weekly installments of "hank feeds his curiosity in real time". Being taught something by an educator is one thing, but joining an educator in learning about something together is S tier educational content. Same reason i loved the reunion video where you talked john through the hypothesis that planets dont exist. I'll always enjoy learning from y'all but getting to watch y'all learn and explore ideas and think it all through in real time is a special kind of joy
I think it will genuinely help a lot of people wh never learned how to use the internet for investigative question-answering! It's a very useful skill to have!
Car guy here: Nardo grey was cool at the time because it was sort of an “off grey” type color, where it wasn’t quite grey, wasn’t quite white, and wasn’t silver. It was a fairly unique yet subtle hue when it came out, and was extra flamboyant when mixed with bright highlight trims, like orange brake calipers. However, due to its popularity, it spawned this trend of “de-saturated” and non-metallic colors, and it’s soooo frustrating with non-grayscale colors also becoming increasingly uncommon due to profit margins. Stuff like “sand” and beige are now super popular, and it’s down to the fact that the metallic and pigments cost more (marginally) to produce, and it’s far cheaper to have paint with flatter and more colorless texture - throw in marketing it as “fashionable” and you get the current reality. I like seeing colorful traffic. Working as a delivery driver in a big city its just concrete and grey cars. It’s really depressing. Back in the 90s you could get most commuter cars in nearly 20 different shades, now you’re lucky to have maybe one or two colors that aren’t on the grey spectrum.
I’ve always loved how Audi’s nardo looked, it has a slight blue/cool hue to it so it’s “off grey” as you say. Although I wouldn’t use it for every car. I think it works better for cars with more boxy/square features, whereas more contoured cars work better with metallic/pearl flakes as it flat colour would hide the shape more.
Also do you know why British racing green is disappearing, I literally just want a nice dark green car but it’s like not really around as it was in early 2000
I can't express enough, just how amazed I am that you had this thought "Cars kinda look like clay or something." And OTHER people had been like "Why cars be lookin' like putty!?"
From a 3D shader programmer, the thing that looks different to the eye about the nardo colors is that the specular highlights (the shiny light reflections) are pure white. With metallic paint jobs, those shinies are influenced by the color of the metal flakes. This is the primary difference between metallic and dielectric materials from a visual standpoint. No matter how brightly colored, dielectrics will always have pure white specular highlights. This is also why the nardo paint looks like a CG render. Physically based rendering with correct metallic shading is relatively new, and beginners often screw it up.
Nailed it. I do the same job, and for some reason my brain only connected the dots to "wet matte"". It's a flat color with a reflective transparent layer on top, exactly like you said.
working at a dealer ship I can always make the "well you got the primer on, what color are you going to paint it?" whenever I see the nardo/boulder gray cars.
@@BloodChampagne Oooh struck a nerve there. but no just a joke between employees. Take a breather since you probably lost too many calories jumping to conclusions.
I do the same thing though. I have a hate of familiar things. I hate houses, apartments or cars that are familiar. You avoid things that remind you of other things. And I generally got negative feels about things by default. I hate to say it but commercials work because people are association machines… And when I see a weird car the color of puke, I get that feeling I could see myself in it.
@@fifty784 So.. Other people's preferences effects you enough to give you the impression that 'they should feel bad' about not choosing from your color palette? Its called Juvenoia btw.. Someone thinking that their idealized version is 'superior', and newer or different versions are inferior or even harmful to society by default. Everything aside.. Who would want to live in a society where everything is the same color, or shape, etc?! I find it kinda boring when I look outside and 90% of autos are Black, White, or Silver.... Anyhow, care to enlighten us all on what the enlightened consider acceptable in terms of color/sheen/vibrance/etc?
As someone who actually has to work with painstakingly recreating those paints and colors and variants digitally for a major car brand I got a certain kick out of this video that I wasn’t prepared for tbh. Will definitely share this with colleagues tomorrow
Do you make just the clay-looking paint or the metal flake or both? Which one cost more to produce? Which brand of car do you work for? Why are you recreating the paint instead of going with the original?
I work in 3D graphics and I think I see what's going on in terms of certain colors being more Nardy than others. Like Hank alluded to, it's a matter of saturation, the richness of the color. We're basically talking about pastel colors which do it. Normally pastel car paints with metal flakes end up pulling lots of colors out of the environment. So when you're not seeing those environmental colors in there, your brain goes wtf. With richly colored cars, the metallic reflections in the flakes will remain the same color as the car paint itself. So if the flakes are gone in a deep red car, it won't seem that different to you, since you're not expecting other colors in there. The Nardo effect is your brain noticing the lack of environmental color in desaturated car paints.
Another way of talking about this is that metallic flake increases the *specular highlights* in the color, and so when it's not included those same colors soften while the reflections dull. It essentially looks like a matte color with a gloss overcoat as the gloss is the only layer still reflecting some of the environment back out, but it's very diffused.
This feels right, but also: depending on where you live and how many old cars you see (old like 25+ years), you might be more used to seeing a non-flake colorful color. Bright cars were more popular some time ago - firetruck red is still firetruck red and doesn't have flake, neither does schoolbus yellow. Herbie the TV Beetle is non-flake grey. My 25 year old medium grey car has flake. I guess it went: car! not-black car! modern (50's, not Ford T) car! colorful car (non-metallic)! metallic car! colorful metallic car! (now) muted non-metallic car! I personally dislike the non-flake muted colors intensely, they look like the car is made of cheap plastic. And I so love that when the video popped up in my feed, I knew exactly what it was going to be about and went 'I think it's the metallic bits, wonder if there's a different thing going on in addition?'
When i first saw that gray "nardo" i fell in love with it. Me trying to explain it to my wife was " you know the silver color cars? So it's like silver but not silvery, just plain gray"
I'm a music teacher and there are certain rhythms that kids always get wrong because they know things about rhythm without consciously knowing it. I tell them that too, "You got it wrong because you know way more about music than you know, and you know music never ends with (insert weird rhythm)." They love hearing that they know more than they think. Suddenly, their mistake is proof of knowledge, and that just amazes them.
Small children, when they begin to speak, will be decent at conjugating irregular verbs and irregular plural nouns. Then at some stage, they suddenly start not being good at that. And that's because they have cracked the regular pattern. Until then, each verb conjugation is its own thing, and each plural form is its own thing, separate from all the others. And at that stage, talking about "irregular" is nonsensical, there is no "regular" to contrast it with. But then suddenly it's all "I eated sand" and "You sitted in my chair" and "My foots are cold", because that's the pattern they have discovered. It feels to me like your music students are at that stage with their music sense.
Back in the '90s, when the SUV started to really take off, cars went from having angles and lines to just being lumpy round things. Color is just a continuation of the gradual metamorphosis into silly putty.
I think it's an attempt to make cars as unoffensive as possible. No sharp edges, no wacky shapes, the same colors, and now dulling out the paint. Almost every car looks the same? Yeah, that's the point. That's the shape and look of cars that statistically sells the best.
Yeah older generation vehicles used to have much more distinct looks, and now every car looks basically the same (even color palettes across brands are nearly identical). It's sad to see as a car enthusiast.
Thank you for this video. The same thought has plagued me for the past couple years, and I didn't know how to articulate the "feeling/sensation" of "knowing-but-not-understanding". You've released pressure that was hiding behind a valve I didn't know how to open.
The “Nard” colors have no depth to them; the metallic, pearlescent colors have a sense of dimension since the eye sees “layers” and sparkles in front of and behind each other.
This is not Nardy, just a remark. In the early 70s metalic paint was new and very desirable. I had a 71 Pumpkin Orange Corolla that got rust fixed and I had it's color changed. I selected a Porsche color called metallic Anaconda Grey. It was an amazing upgrate to my college car. I wasn't Nardaconda Grey. 😂
Hank, I think you've accidentally stumbled upon a fantastic format! I like you're capturing your entire research process to answer a question. I think it could be super useful as a way to exhibit how to use the Internet and sort through the firehose of information. Casual internet research is a skill I've found not many people have a great grasp of.
it’s really sad actually, even a previous commenter said “woah it’s so cool how you had this original thought and looked it up, finding out that there’s already literature about that!” but like you can do this with anything. almost 99% of the time you can look up an original thought that YOU had and the internet can back you up
I agree so much! Using the internet really is a skill and it’s sick for its to be presented here like this because we don’t really get to see examples from “skilled search engine users” that much and in such a raw way! Esp bc he succeeds so simply, all in one piece and we get to see the progression and that is really encouraging!! I could see this as a great classroom teaching video for online research (I am remembering now how many times he said “putty-looking ass whips” so hm.. maybe not lollll)
This is the best part for me. You see he finds something related to his original incomplete thought, and just knows where to dig deeper. He gives credit to blackbird spy plane, sees the earliest mention of the color scheme and says yes yes no yes, and does the investigation himself on what he’s actually referring to. It’s awesome
@@CasperInkyMagoo he literally said he was that though. Cultural knowledge instead of active knowledge. He's only human, not a repository of all of the knowledge in the world.
Car dudes have been complaining about this Nardo Grayification for a few years now, but this is the most eloquent take I've seen. I do think there are two factors: the reactive and cyclical cultural component as you mentioned, but also something substantive in the design. Mainstream car design has become visually much more complex in the past two decades: cars now have dozens of creases and cuts and body lines, are covered in plastic cladding pieces, with enormous grilles filled with ornate details. Meanwhile, the exteriors are covered in sensors, cameras, and other modern tech. When car designs were more conservative and restrained, metallics would have the effect of emphasizing body lines and highlighting design details. This works beautifully on a car with a shape we already consider simple and beautiful, like a Series 1 E-Type or a C3 Stingray. But on today's cars, the move to nonmetallic paints has the opposite effect of hiding body lines and concealing styling details, perhaps dulling down a design we unconsciously acknowledge to be excessively complicated and overstyled, visually resimplifying it to its simple major shapes and silhouettes.
It's funny, because it seems that car design has had to _become_ visually more complex because the shapes of the cars themselves are becoming homogenized. Line up the compact SUVs or crossovers from a dozen different car companies and if you squint just a bit you can't tell them apart. Everything's just some form of blob. You've got your sedan blob, your CUV blob, your sports coupe blob, etc...
THIS THIS THIS THIS!!!!! complex paint and simple body vs complex body and simple paint. Personally, I like this trend in car design so much more then complex paint and body together. And it's so much better than our Grey black white colors that are everywhere. I like the flat earthtones of some of these, but also the blue civic R is exciting with the flat paint. Having a pleasing, solid, and simple color really gives a punch of personality.
this is a fascinating take! i'm so far removed from Car World, so i had no idea about any of this, but the way you've explained it makes total sense to me
This is a fantastic crash course on "how to find out the answer to a question". Like, how to use google, asking different questions and phrases, how to follow sources, how to adapt if things seem contradictory. (Also, yeah the nards do look weird)
It's not just the color that matters, Hank. It's the saturation. The AMOUNT of color pigment in the actual paint coat also matters a lot more than people realize. More than that, car companies have also started cutting down on the amount of clearcoat they use. This ALSO reduces how wet and shiny a car looks. You can paint a car with two or three coats of identical (but desaturated) solid color paint, then give it two coats of clear. That's five total layers. That's the NORM now. Back then, it would be two layers of heavy color WITH another layer of flake AND maybe four or five coats of clear on top. You'd be looking at half a dozen to a dozen coats on the high end. Even today, Koenigsegg is an outlier - they do almost three DOZEN layers of paint.
I build and paint little table top gaming models and this is the exact color of unpainted models. We call it the "color of shame." It means you haven't painted your model yet. People are riding around what looks like an unfinished miniature toy.
I used to work at an auto car wash and the first thing I thought when I saw one of the new 23' or 24' accords with the "nardo paint" was "why does it look like a stormtrooper?". When you mentioned stormtroopers I nearly jumped out of my seat.
I used to work for Sherwin Williams Automotive way back in 2000. You'd be absolutely floored by how many greens and yellows and reds are in black or white paint. We'd add blue, green, yellow, and red mica (kinda like metal flake) to colors that had no business having them in there, like blacks. There are also additives that make colors look 'milky' for touch-ups on classic cars. I think the lack of these nuances is what is giving you these feels. I think they're just straight up single tone colors with a shiny clear over the top. There is also a theory that ALL companies chase the Babyboomers. From Gerber and Pampers for babies to Matel and Hasbro for children. Muscle cars for the late teens and early 20s. All the way up to now with hearing aids and luxury retirement homes. I think this is an attempt to give a modern car a 'classic' feel since those cars pre-date metalics and micas.
I used to work with auto paints too, there's alot more to matching and mixing than most people realise. It's still a mix of pigments in these nardo style paints, just no pearl or mica.
It isn't until you start working with colour objects that you realize that even when you are buying a "neutral" colour you are almost never just getting something that sits on the gradient of black to white, there is always a bit of some other colours in it. Not to mention things like texture, lighting, angle, etc. can all make colours look more similar or drastically different. I've looked absolutely insane on dozens of occasions walking around with things while holding them up in different ways to get a handle on their colour.
"I think they're just straight up single tone colors with a shiny clear over the top" remember how people were calling these colours "candy" ~15-25 years ago. because - well - it literally looks like candy, but rarelly in a good way
*Lamborghini* laid the groundwork for Audi to bring this to everyone else (Audi has owned Lambo since the late 90s). first, they came out with the Murcielago LP640 in like 2006, and the colour of the car in all the promo pictures was a glossy grey, which highlighted the crazy lines of the thing. it looked like a friggin' weapon. then they had other models (Gallardos, iirc) come out in army green, tan, brown or whatever, and then came the Murcielago LP650 Roadster, which was *only available in grey with orange trim.* look it up. Audi wasn't first. I was very into cars at the time and these things were my favourites.
Well, the boomers are the only ones with any friggin money, to be fair. So it makes sense every company tries to advertise towards them. Plus they were the last generation to live all the way into adulthood without the Internet opening up access to culture(s) from all over the world, hence why we still constantly hear popular music from the 60s-70s, it was the last like truly universally accepted music before people's tastes began to atomize
Ive always enjoyed seeing nardo color cars as i drive around. Been driving a yellow supra for the last couple years and when you mentioned nardo yellow looks good i had to pause the video, run out to my car, put my face on it to get a real close look at the yellow paint job, and then snort laughed when i realized i have a nardo yellow car. Idk why it never registered to me but this made my day.
btw, Nardo (grey) is named after the Nardo Ring Test Track in southern Italy. Originally built by Fiat, it is now owned by Porsche which is, like Audi, part of Volkswagen
@@Fractured_Unity Sort of, you aren't wrong enough to say you are wrong, just not very "correct" either. They currently own 42.6% of the company, with stock options for another 31.5 % more.
I couldn't wait until the end- BUT HANK DONT YOU KNOW ABOUT THE GLITTER SHORTAGE!?! THERE IS A SHORTAGE IT STARTED A FEW YEARS AGO!!! LOOK AT THE GLITTER DRAMA!!! That is why we have so much clay!!! It's cheaper than the glitter!
Thank you so much for talking about this!!! I’ve been wondering about this for months and any time I’ve tried to bring it up with someone they had no idea what I was talking about. It’s like a creme nail polish instead of metallic nail polish. One day all the cars were just suddenly not sparkly and no one other than you is talking about it!!!
Metal flake creates highlights and shadows that accentuates lines, plain gloss obfuscates those lines and the color seem to flow evenly over the curves. Creates a wet (soft) rather than crystalline (hard) look.
Yes, the contrast of highlights and shadows is higher in the metallic flake paint--there's a wider color value range. There's less contrast in the perceived colors on the nardo cars because of the reduced light reflection.
Hank my beloved, in the nail polish community we call ‘nardo’ a CREME finish. Most older cars would be referred to as a satin/pearl finish. Thanks SimplyNailLogical lol
Satin is like a blend of matte and gloss. Pearl has an iridescent quality, you might even say it sparkles but it doesn't have flakes. That's metal flake. You are all missing the most basic way to describe this: it's flat. Flat gloss. The color is flat, but after a few layers of clear coat, you get the gloss. But the color itself, it's just flat.
The funny thing is, Cristine got her start with colors/painting at her dad's auto body shop dealing with car paint! Hank should contact Simply to get her opinion on this trend!
The bolder, brighter colors don’t look as weird because the intensity of the colors replaces the metallic sheen of the flake. It’s just less noticeable that something is missing.
Brighter colors also reflect light better. Bright colors basically do the opposite and mute the sparkles, because youre seeing so much light reflection already.
I once sat next to a"Color Consultant" who worked for the industrial paints division of something like Pittsburgh Paints. They were flying out to help Freightliner decide what colors they would offer the next year. They said that color consultants, as a group, worked at establishing color trends across all kinds of industries, from cars to home decor to clothes.
I love the way you just organically talk about this at the camera (not to the camera, but at the camera). It's such a relatable thought process. I've watched this video twice. Why? idk. I've never watched a vlogbrothers video twice.
My boyfriend and I, a few months ago, driving around Utah, kept seeing "milky" cars. But yeah, the grey ones look like wet putty 100%! I love that we've all noticed this and pondered it. Like you said, we have this background knowledge we didn't even know we had!
this video made me think of football helmets, there was a huge matte craze about ten years ago (compare minnesota vikings old helmets vs new), and of course the big chrome/mirror phase (notre dame, oregon ducks), and I always liked the washington state gray helmets, they are super nardy
I’m so glad I got the opportunity to witness one of my favorite internet people explore a question which I, an extremely LIGHT auto enthusiast, have been asking myself for years now, and finally have the answer to! I remember like two years ago looking at the new Toyotas, thinking “wow those are some cool colors, why do they look so different?” And then very soon after seeing them come from multiple different manufacturers. Now I know why! Also, that little bit around 3:25 about motion smoothing making everything look like Spanish soap operas was SO REAL and something else I’ve thought about subconsciously, and I will be expecting another video about that phenomenon shortly 😂
My suspicion is that adding flake to cooler and desaturated colors was common to make them seem less plain, to look cooler and stand out a little more, while bright warm colors like red, yellow, and orange didn't really need that, if anything if you took an orange car and added metallic flake it'd be like over-the-top "WHOA THIS THING IS COPPER". So now that the flake is trending away, seeing those bright warm colors without flake is unsurprising because that's always been a thing, but the cooler and desaturated colors are like "huh, this is a little… plain? flat? what is missing here?"
In Sweden I've seen a bunch of orange Metallic cars lately, and my parents have a red Metallic car. All new of course. Neither of which I saw often 5-10 years ago. So I think the trend might be working both ways! Just waiting to spot a bright yellow Metallic car now lol
As someone who’s been surrounded by car culture my whole life, the metallic / metal flake being in most car paint is something I didn’t even realize other people weren’t aware of.
How can so many people have never looked at, asked about, or been told the names of the paint options? In brochures? On a "build your car" website? For decades most of the names ended with "metallic."
@AtomicBuffalo it makes sense particularly in light of that, that it's time for something new. There have been eras of more flake, and less flake, and I guess they went as far as they could with the edgy and futuristic metallic colors, and so now the new thing is flat cremes. I think they tried matte for a hot second but nobody liked those. It needs to look clean and polished still. And in 20ish years, we'll start seeing metallic again. As for why it looks different visually, the highlights and shadows aren't as pronounced. 😊
@@CasperInkyMagoo yes! Thinking like a child is probably the reason behind so many scientific discoveries. Re-discovering the world with a naive mind (at first, then cleverly digging) is probably what made Einstein discover gravity!
The first car color that struck me this way was VW’s “Aquarius Blue” used on Beetles starting in around 2003. A light grey-blue that’s different to anything I’d seen before. No metallic or pearl at all, can’t tell if it’s grey or blue, but so appealing I have to stare at it every time I see it.
I buy the whole primer story. I work in paint shops for various car companies ( I program paint booths). When I saw this trend, I immediately thought of primer. Most if not all cars are primed before the main colour is added. Primed cars have a flat colour with no depth or metal flakes, and if you add a clear coat, the colours usually become glossy. These cars look like they skipped the main colour and were just primed and clear coated.
Totally. The funny thing too is that you can now go and get a matte clear wrap to turn your gloss car flat, which looks pretty sick on the right car. Ironically, I like the nardo trends, I like the matte wraps, and I like a primered rat rod, but I very much didn't like when Mercedes and BMW tried to offer matte factory paint - that didn't work at all IMO.
As a guitar refinisher, I am pleased to see my kindred spirits in the comments: model painters, nail art enthusiasts, and of course, car geeks. One of the things that others have mentioned here: metallics, particularly the translucent metallics that are so popular on automobiles, are both costly and difficult to spray. There is the additional problem of having to run metallics and flat gloss finishes on the same production line- a single drip or swirl of leftover metallic flake from a sprayer on to a flat gloss finish might ruin the product at the very end of the production process, where the loss is most costly. I think the reason you see flat red, yellow, white and black as "normal" car finishes has to do with those formulations being historically popular- old Ferraris and Porsches, yellow NYC Taxis (those might actually have some pearlescence to them now that I think about it), and of course flat white and black automobiles of all stripes (pun not intended).
As a car enthusiast, I love getting non-enthusiast takes on this. Another factor that plays into the "just hip enough" aspect, is that while manufacturers choose the colors to produce, dealers often choose the colors they will order for their allocations, and dealers want safe sales. Black, white, and silver are "safe" bets for them because a wacky color example of a car might sit and take longer to sell. This reinforces the trend toward grey tones and becomes self-fulfilling, but then manufacturers look for other ways to stand out, and you get the just hip enough gloss variations. Personally, I love the gloss blues like that Toyota 4 Runner example. That might be one of the best colors in all of cars right now.
I got a car in 2022, when new cars were not sent out to dealers unless ordered, so I actually got to choose the color of my car straight up and didn't have to pick from their current options on the lot (which were none). So now I have a nice, blue car that doesn't look like putty cuz it's got FLAKE. And I get compliments on it! Because it's not black or gray or white, it's *different,* and people don't expect it.
@emmarabenhorst3106 yeah I think a lot of people would benefit from a shift toward more order-and-wait style car buying but many are still tied to the drive-it-home-today model. I went through this when I was buying my jeep because I wanted a particular trim package with a manual transmission. Dealers feel about manuals the same way they feel about vibrant colors, so I was prepared to order it but it happened that one of the 5 in the whole country that matched my criteria was "only" a couple hours away from me so I made the drive to get it.
Nobody remembers that flat or matte cars are just purposeful take on the primered cars that people drove without painting. Many colors look weird now because every vehicle has been a version of metallic silver for 20 years. You used to could just get smurf blue or purple cars and trucks. Dodge and Ford have leadfoot and destroyer gray that I call cartoon gray because it looks like a throwback to old cars.
@@jceggbert5 Have you seen those dealerships that take new slightly lifted regular cab 4x4s and gives them two tone paint and white spoke wheels and makes them look 70s or 80s models?
I swear, the reason I love you so much is that you have this enthusiasm which is the same enthusiasm I get when I research something for writing. Right now, I'm enamored with 1750's Iran because no one else has been? Why is this a forgotten history segment? It's fascinating. Also, when I was a tiny and my mom took me to car shows, I loved the cars that were just primer, I just wished they were glossy like other cars. Go figure it would be another *coughthirtycough* years until I saw my dreams come true. And now, I want a green car because everything is black/white/gray 😅
if i was still a school librarian, i would assign this video to show how the research process goes. just a joy to watch. also, this reminds me that we don’t know where most of the glitter manufactured in the world goes, but some of it goes into car paint!
Please do. For their sake. I write technical documents at work. I'm only in my mid 30s. The amount of gray hair I'm literally accumulating from the lack of basic research skills and self-help being the last thought they have is.... It makes me sad. Like, they hired a bunch of helpless puppies that have never encountered Google in their lives. I really feel bad for them, because no wonder many of them are struggling in certain areas of basic life skills. Adulthood is not going to be kind to them if they are unable to even have basic research abilities to teach themselves anything.
THANK YOUUUUU for making this video! These flat color cars have been bothering me for a while! My mom bought a blue SUV that is definitely a nardo, and I havent gotten used to it even after several months. And yet they had a white SUV that has no flake or glitter, but it doesnt feel weird. My sister's yellow car is also flat and doest look weird. But that blue suv is almost uncanny. Please I want sparkly cars back!
I'm with you there. I want my little ford focus to be visible on the road, and therefore sparkly, not dull pavement color. Little side note here, I like it when cars have excess sparkles, to the extent that it appears to be different colors from different angles. My sister has a very sparkly Honda, and it looks gray from some angles and green from others. That's not an effect you can get with nardo cars. God bless, and may you always have sparkles in your car paint :)
I have a hunch that flat yellow doesn't look weird because you're used to seeing it - think school bus, ambulance, construction equipment, taxi... And when metallics were extra hip, yellow wasn't (cool silvers, not warm golds and coppers)
Dude, I've been noticing the SAME thing about colors, and had the same difficulty articulating what I was noticing. THANK YOU FOR SCRATCHING THAT ITCH IN MY BRAIN!
Thank you Hank. I've been driving around for ages wondering why so many cars have not been finished. They look like someone started a total respray, but stopped after the primer. Now I know it's not just me. 😊
Being a life long car guy, I REALLY appreciate that you actually went through everything from the start. Yes it's all in the "finish" satin is a somewhat "semi-matte" just kinda spreads the shine across the surface. Matte is obviously no gloss whatsoever. Metallic has been played with since "candy" paints in lowrider/hotrod culture. I could literally go all day. Paint is absolutely wild man, I thank you for allowing me a video to spread around 😂
Someone else has probably said it but you are talking about specularity. The tightness of the reflection blobs is the difference. “Classic” paint has a large white reflection of white light, and the putty cars have tight tiny white light reflections. It’s a concept commonly used in 3D
You're actually talking about smoothness/roughness, not specularity. All clearcoated paintjobs are very smooth, they have a near-mirror finish, with tight specular highlights. The matte cars (and water bottles he mistakenly showed as examples of "nardy") have broad highlights and the reflections are very diffuse (same thing: they're microscopically rough and scatter reflected light) Flake is a trick that does both things: you have a mirror finish with tiny highlight on the top clearcoat layer, but under it you have a random distribution of little mirror flakes at different angles (and possibly different colors) that creates a second wide specular highlight (that's likely tinted) to really accentuate the angle between the light and the surface. Literally highlights the curves. Without the flake you still get the reflections (unlike a matte finish) but you're missing the broad highlights we're used to lately.
I think the reason nardo doesn’t look weird for some bright colors is just that those colors have been typically nard for longer. If you look at yellow cars at least for my entire life, they’ve never been metallic. Same for orange and bright greens. If you google ‘yellow car 2005’, most of the images will be nardo cars, or at least less metallic than cars of other colors from the era.
As a scale model builder, I will say that if you paint your model car with gloss grey paint, people will look at it and go "Why didn't you paint your model, it still looks like plastic". Whereas if you use a metal flake paint people will say "Man! That looks so REAL!" So when my wife and I started noticing the Nardo colored cars we thought that they looked like unpainted plastic model cars. We are not a fan of the trend. But absolutely if we see the non-flake red, yellow, black, or white, it looks just fine. Thanks for making this video, it answered a lot of questions we had about this weird-ass-paint-color trend.
THANK YOU!! Since I started noticing this car color trend I've been trying to describe it and was using "matte/flat" even though I KNOW it's not actually matte, it's shiny, and it has become a thing that lives rent free in my brain. My aunt has the flat light blue-gray Honda CRV. Why does my brain hate it/latch onto it?!!!!? THANK YOU! Also this made me think of the shiny/sparkly teal blue color that was so on trend in the 90s (I think?? time is weird now) that i remember loving and wanting, and thinking back to it now, if you saw a car that color in a movie it would 100% be an intentional decision to drive home the era being the 90s (or whatever). Wild.
i've never seen someone with grey nailpolish, or ocre, or pastel green.... i don't get why people call it this. It's one of the last connections i would make...
@@DrTheRich Hi. Nail tech here. "Nardo"-type colors are very much "in" right now, too, and have been for a few years. I'm currently wearing a light putty-looking blue as I type this.
I think the "Just Hip Enough" theory is mostly whats going on here. Never really gave it much thought but it makes sense. Manufacturers for years usually just produced your basic 5-6 colors and then the premium colors were so insanely retina assaulting that people dont want to drive it. My dad got the 4Runner in the new Underground and it looks sick but not too flashy.
It seems to be part of the larger trend of everyone gravitating towards neutrals in everything from home design to even children’s toys. I’ve heard people say things like “bright colors assault my eyes” and “color makes things look cluttered and it overwhelms me”. So maybe it’s all coming from us being in a state of overwhelm and wanting our environments at least to be calming in as much as we can control them. Minimalism ties into it too, I think.
This should be shown as an instructional video for how to research! He generates multiple search phrase combinations to find any useful information. Then, he immediately finds a second source and tries to verify the first one. Then, he checks the source of the article, and further verifies the other two. And finally, he forms his own opinion based on his own observations and how they relate to the new info. Very cool to see how naturally it comes to Hank from all his years of experience researching stuff.
This "I wanna buy something but don't stand out" is also why in men's section in clothing stores, it's all grey, black, blue, red, and white, in that order, with one forest green hoodie and exactly one orange shirt if you're lucky. I buy almost exclusively "forbidden" colours, especially purple, magenta and pink. I like to stand out. I WOULD buy an orange car.
Interesting, but there are different reasons for those things I believe. The car colors thing is more about getting pulled over. Red/ flashy cars are statistically more likely to get the cops attention I think. (Haven't checked my stat knowledge so take it with a grain of salt).
I don't think that's the reason, white and black clothes cut a more flattering silhouette. Some people are confident enough to wear a bright shirt that highlights all their body's imperfections, but most people don't want to subject themselves to that.
Nard nerd here 👋 I just had this conversation yesterday in someone’s car (yes my phone was listening). I was theorising that this aesthetic might be coming from the familiarity we now all have with the look of raw CG renders, now that 3D printing is commonplace. It may not be a direct lift from this digital look, but I think it’s definitely an influence. There’s even a 3D sculpting program called PUTTY 3D. On the issue of some colours looking more “nardo” than others. These “new” colours are not only devoid of metallic flake, they’re also all opaque, seeming to have a higher than usual white content in the mix. Grey and cool colours look the most nardo because they’re low frequency so the pigments don’t overwhelm, or cut through, the white content, which makes the colour look sort of inert and wetly trapped under a layer of gloss. Warmer and brighter colours may have a similar white content, but the higher frequency pigment either overwhelms or at least balances out the milky flattening effect. White doesn’t look nardo because we expect white to contain… um… white. That, combined with the lack of subsurface light scattering from the metallic flake normally suspended in car paint, makes the colour appear shiny yet dimensionless. They are looking less weird every time I see them… and that’s how eras form aesthetically 👀
This is basically what my sister told me, she knows nothing about cars or colors, but when I asked her why these new colors look so creamy, she was like "They probably mix more white into them."
Funny thing is, there is nothing new about this. Google "grey ford model A" and you see cars looking exactly like this. Non metallic, flat grey with a thick non transparent layer of paint. Just old trends recycled. btw technically you're incorrect about the lack of subsurface light scattering. Because it's exactly what makes this effect. It's just that the mechanics are different. Pure metal on it's own does not have sss, because it reflects 99.5% of light. And non metallic always have some level of sss. If you put metallic flakes suspended in a non-metallic substance though, the metallic flakes bounce the light around more directionally inside the material giving you a different effect than a pure metal surface, or a pure non-metal surface. Non-metal surfaces like flat paint, or plastic, have a totally diffusive sss creating that matte feeling even if the surface is shiny and glossy.
Hank the organization of this video feels like I'm sitting with my older brother at the family computer going down random Internet rabbit holes, this was wonderful thank you 😂😂
THANK YOU HANK GREEN! I have been freaking out about this to everyone I know for months and no one else seems as freaking out about it as much as I am. I’m glad I’m in such good company.
4:15 I love that feeling when you're trying something just for the heck of it knowing it's not gonna work, and then the realization, that it, it somehow worked
Right?! I clicked on the video because the car colour really interests me. But Hank's curls are just fascinating to look at when you're used to seeing him with straight hair.
Like any trend those colours instantly communicate “new” which helps make the metallic old cars feel old. Driving sales. However the trend will fall hard I suspect after a few years and become dated.
I have a suspicion that they’ll look dirtier and have more visible scratches. One of the reasons you have the metal flake and stuff is because it makes unevenness less visible. It’s the same reason why so many people often have a problem with getting white or black cars - you notice EVERYTHING on them.
Which is also super interesting. How amazing is it that we can collectively point to something feeling old. Outstanding pattern recognition. And then we can also collectively point to something that's so old it's cool again. It's an ominous culturally connected feeling
The same thing is happening with kitchens too. I helped my parents design a kitchen 20y ago, and then it was all about wood-effect plastic wrapped cabinets with granite tops. Now granite is 'old fashioned' and cabinets are flat grey or f'n milk paint colours. Like how is this in any way an improvement?
Those flat (no sparkle) colors were common in the 70s and before. The first time I saw a sky blue car of this type of color, I was immediately reminded of my dad's truck from about 1970. I love the new flat colors, especially the blue shades.
I'm laughing hysterically, imagining what the uncut footage of this ordeal of discovery must have looked like. Mad props to Milo for editing it down to what's a surprisingly coherent narrative.
The thing you said about motion smoothing is so accurate. My uncle and aunt are upper middle class and had a 4k TV well before any other family members did. When we went for Christmas one year, they had on NCIS, a show that my parents binged and I was very used to seeing. The details and the fact that it looked so real actually took away some of the immersion for me. It was like I could see the makeup, the lighting, and the fact that it was a staged shot. It is incredibly hard to articulate exactly why though, that's just my best attempt. Very much an uncanny feeling
@@ayoCC interesting, I've heard a lot of people say this because they're used to it. On the other hand for me movies often seem so stuttery if they have a low framerate :(. I know this is a unique example but for animated shows/films if they do a certain low framerate style (they do it on purpose for nostalgia or convention like movies do) like in Spiderverse or in "The Dragon Prince" I find it incredibly difficult to watch. In the dragon prince it even looks like the facial expressions are at a different framerate and the body movements are lagging and even tho I was enjoying it it kept pulling me out of the story. I haven't even tried to watch spiderverse all the way thru yet just from seeing clips online, though I eventually will.
That's why when everything started switching to HD I just stopped watching tv and movies. That and the fact there's nothing made that's worth getting my money anymore.
I saw the title of your video some months ago but I didn't watch it. Then I started actually noticing many cars that looked like putty around me and I kept thinking "I have to watch that video to find out why!". Thanks then, it was a good find
I think the uncanny valley factor might come from the fact that all the colours you mentioned looking weird, are (at least in my mind) METAL colours - even the blues and greens have that "oh this is metal" vibe to them. Which means, without the (well, metallic) sparkle they look weird. The vibrant colours though, we're used to them being non metallic so they don't seem weird without the bling.
OMG FINALLY! I’ve been talking about this for a years(?) now! I’ve always described it as putty or some even as “video game glitch-like” or “the texture hasn’t loaded yet” as some of the lighter colored ones reflect the sky/surroundings in a way that makes them almost just blend into the background.
Haha yes. I just commented that they look like video game cars from like 10 years ago (maybe 15 years ago at this point though) but I think your comment is slightly more accurate
The grey and putty colors remind me of filing cabinets. Offices used to have walls of them, and "Putty" was an actual color for metal office furniture. I think there are enough people young enough to have never worked in an office full filing cabinets that these colors look new now.
I have also referred to that mentally as “file cabinet color,” thought what it really reminds me of is industrial machinery that’s got that sort of opaque enamel with a gloss finish, usually on a kind of hammered-texture surface. It’s creepy and I hate it.
No I work in public schools. I specifically seek out black furniture for my room because I can't stand that gray. I never connected it to file cabinets. I thought of nail polish.
As someone taking a computer graphics class, this relates to something my professor was talking about with materials and reflection. The "nardo" colors are extremely pure, with low specular and high shininess, so it looks like hard plastic, which is very different from the high specular reflection with low shininess that our brain expects from something made of metal
Glitter shortage? Also does this confirm that car paint is the single biggest client of glitter in the world and that they want to remain anonymous cause they don't want people knowing car paint contains glitter?
@@pup.piston it's with boat paint, it's just at one point people wondered if it was car paint and the main comment fit that old myth perfectly and I found it funny
@@plazasta Ah yeah that makes sense, and it is pretty funny to me bcs half of the people who would care about having glitter in their car paint don't want people to know it's glitter lol
I totally get this - they're flat colors that very much have white in the base color, and they definitely give weird lumpy vibes. I think we're used to being able to see the contours of a car from the way the light hits the metallic flakes in the curves, so the lack of that reflective quality makes it weird uncanny valley 2D strangeness. (Also this is my first time commenting on one of your videos so hi!!) Edit: I think the strangeness is directly proportional to the amount of white in the base of the paint (so red and bright yellow are fine, but weird light orange is weird.)
I think you're really onto something here with the white content thing. But interestingly I think when things get suuuuuper pale and close to white, they start looking okay and non-weird again.
In the Helicon days of my youth, I worked on cars. Flat grey primer was generally the last primer coat before adding the final paint color. Some people didn't have a separate car to drive while fixing up the body and paint, so they drove the primer coated car around. That's what this "new" trend feels like to me. I do not dig non-metallic painted cars, but in general flat colors like white, black, red, yellow, orange or dark green or blue don't bother me, but the clay and putty colors remind me of those primer colored cars of old. Thanks for covering this topic, Hank! I've been spit balling the topic with friends and this helped.
Had to come back to this video to say that now every time I see one of these cars in daily life, I hear a faint Hank voice saying "putty-ass whips" in my head. Genuinely brings joy every time, thank you!
Hahaha yep, I just watched this and I KNOW that will happen to me too and I will also be saying it out loud to someone at some point who will be confused
FINALLY an answer to the question I've been wondering for so long. My older car is a simple silver from Honda, not a ton of flake, but definitely silver and not gray. Makes me think a little more about car color and how much flake matters. Personally, I love paint that has a pearl or flake to it. I always associated that with something being a little more premium, but maybe that's just my experience with guitar paint and drum wraps.
I love how connected you make us all feel. I had the same thought when I saw these Nardo cars thinking “well this is weird but why is it weird?” And I left it at that. I love that you delved in deeper.
FINALLY. For years I have commented when visiting my dad that his TV looks like a Spanish Soap Opera and no one understood me. And I couldn’t describe why. I hadn’t heard of anyone else recognizing it, and it’s been so long, I was resolved that I’d never understand it. BUT YOU DID IT, HANK. Now I can learn all about motion smoothing. And to have it revealed to me the same day as the solar eclipse! How fancy. Also neat about the putty whips. 10/10 Great video.
Specifically, I believe it is 60Hz (or even 120Hz upsampling). Try watching The Hobbit in its filmed 48fps and compare to the 24fps releases. The higher frame rate looks like behind-the-scenes of actors playing the parts, while 24fps looks like a glimpse into the alternate reality of the story.
TV's come with all sorts of picture modes turned on by default. My first move with any tv is to go into picture and "extra" settings and turn EVERYTHING OFF. Digital smooth, dynamic contrast, de-noise, dynamic color, "real/smooth/ultra motion" etc. Each one *sounds* good by itself, but taken together they actually destroy detail and color. Turn it all off and then very selctively turn a few up them up (maybe low instead of off on contrast enhancement). Even better if you do it with a piece of content you're familiar with so you know not only if it looks right -- but if it *looks wrong*. Enjoy your TVs again (and yes i do this when I visit friends and families houses -- people that don't notice, won't notice that it changed, and people that do notice will never have their eyes burned)
People got used to most film and television being at 24 fps or 30 fps and Spanish soaps and sports being at 60 fps. Switch them around and it feels wrong. Even though technically, higher frame rates are superior.
I worked at a car dealership 2017-2019 and they started experimenting with these colors. I checked in new cars and put them in the system as well as put them on the lot. I remember telling my boss that I couldn't "check in the cars that look like earth because they make me nauseous". I'm glad I'm not the only one so unsettled by them!
I find these muted car ( especially the gray tones) blend into the landscape background making it harder to see due to the lack of contrast between the vehicle and the environment. Anyoe else?
Not crayons that have been dumped into the bin, mind you. Right out of the package, from the factory, open for the first time in all their Crayola glory. Fresh crayons
YES! I can't explain why either, but seeing these cars that look like they've been painted with friggin' house paint is super disorienting to me while I'm driving! Drives me bonkers!
I hate how hard they are to see in the fog. I don't think you should be able to make a matte fog colored car. Seems like you're asking for someone to hit you
These have been weirding me out for years. They started showing up before the pandemic even. I’ve been struggling ever since to express what it was about them…so I could ask others if they’d noticed them and whether they found them unpleasant to look at too…but this is the first time I’ve heard anyone else ask this or even seem aware that they’re out there, just driving around in plain sight. Finally, I know for sure I’m not crazy. They’re a real thing, and, yes, they’re weird.
As a car enthusiast and automotive engineer, I enjoyed watching your journey of discovery down this rabbit hole of putty-looking ahh whips. "Just hip enough" is indeed the most complete answer to your question. People want to blend in at a glance, but stand out if somebody's actually paying any attention to them. My understanding of the history is that putty-looking colours were cheaper to make in the 50s and 60s (one could skip adding the metallic flake and in many cases even the glossy clear-coat), so I imagine it later went out of fashion due to the image of being basic and uninspired. Then as the vinyl-wrapping industry kicked off in the early 00's, somehow the washed out greys were rediscovered by enthusiasts looking to change up the colour of their vehicle. Car companies saw this uptick in popularity and decided to join the bandwagon, offering pastelle colours from factory. On smaller sportscars this can look like you're driving a crayon, while on larger SUVs it's more of a tacticool gun-looking finish. Young people seem to love it, while the older ones still remember the multiple fashion waves before this and mock the putty colours by saying "did you pay extra for the dealership to leave your car in primer?", as if they didn't bother applying any colour at all, just a protective primer layer and that's it. Personally, I love seeing the magic of a good metallic flake in a paint, as it's more of a dynamic colour depending on the lighting conditions.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Hi Hank! Automotive paint raw material specialist here, it feels like you made this video specifically for me 😁
You did some great deductions of figuring out the lack of metallic flake giving the "Nardo" feeling. I can maybe give you some more details into *why* automotive companies started going that way.
#1 Cost: Metallic flakes are typically from aluminum sources, which can be difficult to source cheaply and reliably. Rising aluminum prices means that by removing them from the paint formulations, you save more money.
#2 Complexity: Aligning the metallic flakes to achieve maximum sparkle is HARD. Seriously, it's like witchcraft and physics had a baby with how we figured out how to spray paint out of a rotating nozzle, get it to adhere to the coating layer, and also lay flat to reflect light in the best way. Any number of chemistry or physics related things can go wrong with the coating to make it not work the way you want it to. I bet there were a lot of issues making a new generation coating that flake was causing, so R&D just said, "screwing, we'll make it without any flake"
#3 Customers: Some people genuinely like the softer, pastel looking subtleness of the "Nardo" colors. Ultimately we make paint for people to buy them, so customers get the final say in what succeeds in the market. You brought up a great point of culture shifts looking for something "new, but the same". Flake has become pretty standardized in most vehicles that Nardo really gives the feeling of it being the same color, but different. We deal with more than just the color as a physical wavelength, but also as a psychological perception.
Thank you for adding your insight!
+
+
+
Bring back glitter! I own an orange car now because it was the only non putty option that wasn’t hi vis yellow. Also, why so many colors with gray bases? Minimalism is dead. People want color!
As a nail polish wearer, these colour/finish trends happen all the time and I had noticed this and thought "Ohhh cars are doing THAT now" in nail polish land we call it cremè colour when there's no metallic/sparkle and the colour is dense rather than sheer.
Yes! I’m glad someone said it. It’s just crème!
Yeah I also came to the comments to say this. Car paint probably has more in common with nail polish that normal paints too so it makes sense to me.
Yes! I said this out loud a couple years ago! "Oh cars are one coat cremes now" glad this makes sense to other people too!
Do yall think eventually we will get “jelly” car colors with like a white base coat? OoOo or multichrome shimmer? or flakies?!?
Is it in anyway like the colour of DIY furniture painting chalk paint? Because that was my reaction.
Yeah so turns out imma need like weekly installments of "hank feeds his curiosity in real time". Being taught something by an educator is one thing, but joining an educator in learning about something together is S tier educational content. Same reason i loved the reunion video where you talked john through the hypothesis that planets dont exist. I'll always enjoy learning from y'all but getting to watch y'all learn and explore ideas and think it all through in real time is a special kind of joy
+
💯
+
1000 times, YES!
I think it will genuinely help a lot of people wh never learned how to use the internet for investigative question-answering! It's a very useful skill to have!
Car guy here:
Nardo grey was cool at the time because it was sort of an “off grey” type color, where it wasn’t quite grey, wasn’t quite white, and wasn’t silver. It was a fairly unique yet subtle hue when it came out, and was extra flamboyant when mixed with bright highlight trims, like orange brake calipers.
However, due to its popularity, it spawned this trend of “de-saturated” and non-metallic colors, and it’s soooo frustrating with non-grayscale colors also becoming increasingly uncommon due to profit margins. Stuff like “sand” and beige are now super popular, and it’s down to the fact that the metallic and pigments cost more (marginally) to produce, and it’s far cheaper to have paint with flatter and more colorless texture - throw in marketing it as “fashionable” and you get the current reality.
I like seeing colorful traffic. Working as a delivery driver in a big city its just concrete and grey cars. It’s really depressing. Back in the 90s you could get most commuter cars in nearly 20 different shades, now you’re lucky to have maybe one or two colors that aren’t on the grey spectrum.
I’ve always loved how Audi’s nardo looked, it has a slight blue/cool hue to it so it’s “off grey” as you say. Although I wouldn’t use it for every car. I think it works better for cars with more boxy/square features, whereas more contoured cars work better with metallic/pearl flakes as it flat colour would hide the shape more.
Also do you know why British racing green is disappearing, I literally just want a nice dark green car but it’s like not really around as it was in early 2000
Welcome to the car colours of Australia. Black, white, silver, grey & one that’s not them. Booo. I hate the flat greys btw, they look like undercoat.
I can't express enough, just how amazed I am that you had this thought "Cars kinda look like clay or something." And OTHER people had been like "Why cars be lookin' like putty!?"
I literally had this thought this morning. This light grey glossy car color is just awful and will not look good in 5 years.
I'm going to quote this in a project, I dunno what project but I'll know it when I have it@JuiceTubes
humans just be like this i think
I had peripherally noticed it, but not formulated the thought yet, and I definitely thought I was trippin. Turns out, not so much!
@@ShannonLambert I'm talking specifically about the mental association between these cars, clay and putty
From a 3D shader programmer, the thing that looks different to the eye about the nardo colors is that the specular highlights (the shiny light reflections) are pure white. With metallic paint jobs, those shinies are influenced by the color of the metal flakes. This is the primary difference between metallic and dielectric materials from a visual standpoint. No matter how brightly colored, dielectrics will always have pure white specular highlights. This is also why the nardo paint looks like a CG render. Physically based rendering with correct metallic shading is relatively new, and beginners often screw it up.
🤯 thanks for sharing your knowledge!!
I did notice that, but wasn't sure I was right about it being weird looking.
I was looking for somebody to say this
Nailed it. I do the same job, and for some reason my brain only connected the dots to "wet matte"". It's a flat color with a reflective transparent layer on top, exactly like you said.
Awesome!!!!
Please do more of these. Hank having questions, going down internet rabbit holes and taking us along for the ride. Love it.
Omg yessssss please! This is the kind of Fri after work nerdy friend chats I used to have in college!
ride? like, what you do in cars?
Hank Green, Internet nard detective
i concur!
yeeees
working at a dealer ship I can always make the "well you got the primer on, what color are you going to paint it?" whenever I see the nardo/boulder gray cars.
Oh, so you make customers feel bad about their choices. Clever!
@@BloodChampagne Oooh struck a nerve there. but no just a joke between employees. Take a breather since you probably lost too many calories jumping to conclusions.
I do the same thing though. I have a hate of familiar things. I hate houses, apartments or cars that are familiar. You avoid things that remind you of other things. And I generally got negative feels about things by default. I hate to say it but commercials work because people are association machines…
And when I see a weird car the color of puke, I get that feeling I could see myself in it.
@@BloodChampagnethey should
@@fifty784 So.. Other people's preferences effects you enough to give you the impression that 'they should feel bad' about not choosing from your color palette? Its called Juvenoia btw.. Someone thinking that their idealized version is 'superior', and newer or different versions are inferior or even harmful to society by default. Everything aside.. Who would want to live in a society where everything is the same color, or shape, etc?! I find it kinda boring when I look outside and 90% of autos are Black, White, or Silver.... Anyhow, care to enlighten us all on what the enlightened consider acceptable in terms of color/sheen/vibrance/etc?
As someone who works in the auto industry, watching you work through this without the vocabulary has been delightful
I imagine that would be so irrationally funny to me
Now I know why I love that turquoise blue bronco so much 😂
Came here to say this exact thing 😂
As someone who actually has to work with painstakingly recreating those paints and colors and variants digitally for a major car brand I got a certain kick out of this video that I wasn’t prepared for tbh. Will definitely share this with colleagues tomorrow
Come back and tell us their reactions lol. Are you a fan of the "Putty Ass looking Whips" you have to recreate digitally? 🤣
Please make cars more colorful and less bland.
@@mattwhaley1865let people like what they like
Do you make just the clay-looking paint or the metal flake or both? Which one cost more to produce? Which brand of car do you work for? Why are you recreating the paint instead of going with the original?
@@danthemanoftheland digitally
I work in 3D graphics and I think I see what's going on in terms of certain colors being more Nardy than others. Like Hank alluded to, it's a matter of saturation, the richness of the color. We're basically talking about pastel colors which do it. Normally pastel car paints with metal flakes end up pulling lots of colors out of the environment. So when you're not seeing those environmental colors in there, your brain goes wtf. With richly colored cars, the metallic reflections in the flakes will remain the same color as the car paint itself. So if the flakes are gone in a deep red car, it won't seem that different to you, since you're not expecting other colors in there. The Nardo effect is your brain noticing the lack of environmental color in desaturated car paints.
+
seeing nardo colors on cars out in the wild has been bothering me but somehow your explanation of things makes me feel less weird about them, thanks!
THANK YOU for this explanation
Another way of talking about this is that metallic flake increases the *specular highlights* in the color, and so when it's not included those same colors soften while the reflections dull. It essentially looks like a matte color with a gloss overcoat as the gloss is the only layer still reflecting some of the environment back out, but it's very diffused.
This feels right, but also: depending on where you live and how many old cars you see (old like 25+ years), you might be more used to seeing a non-flake colorful color. Bright cars were more popular some time ago - firetruck red is still firetruck red and doesn't have flake, neither does schoolbus yellow. Herbie the TV Beetle is non-flake grey. My 25 year old medium grey car has flake. I guess it went: car! not-black car! modern (50's, not Ford T) car! colorful car (non-metallic)! metallic car! colorful metallic car! (now) muted non-metallic car!
I personally dislike the non-flake muted colors intensely, they look like the car is made of cheap plastic. And I so love that when the video popped up in my feed, I knew exactly what it was going to be about and went 'I think it's the metallic bits, wonder if there's a different thing going on in addition?'
When i first saw that gray "nardo" i fell in love with it. Me trying to explain it to my wife was " you know the silver color cars? So it's like silver but not silvery, just plain gray"
I'm a music teacher and there are certain rhythms that kids always get wrong because they know things about rhythm without consciously knowing it. I tell them that too, "You got it wrong because you know way more about music than you know, and you know music never ends with (insert weird rhythm)." They love hearing that they know more than they think. Suddenly, their mistake is proof of knowledge, and that just amazes them.
Small children, when they begin to speak, will be decent at conjugating irregular verbs and irregular plural nouns. Then at some stage, they suddenly start not being good at that. And that's because they have cracked the regular pattern.
Until then, each verb conjugation is its own thing, and each plural form is its own thing, separate from all the others. And at that stage, talking about "irregular" is nonsensical, there is no "regular" to contrast it with. But then suddenly it's all "I eated sand" and "You sitted in my chair" and "My foots are cold", because that's the pattern they have discovered.
It feels to me like your music students are at that stage with their music sense.
Love this! Kids are so smart in so many ways!
It's like how you don't think about adjective order but you know that size comes before color, you call it a small brown dog not a brown small dog
@@personwithhat1came here specifically to mention adjective order.
Thank you for starting your comment with "I'm a music teacher, and..." instead of "As a music teacher..."
signed, someone with a weird pet peeve
I need to know how many more times Hank said 'putty ass lookin' whips' in the unedited version. 😹
Is it just me or does the BBSP "putty-lookin ass whips" land...odd. 😂
I need a supercut of Hank just saying those words, in various configurations... for like an hour.
@@Kaotiqua People of the void, let's please make this happen! 👏😹
I just kept waiting for "wet ass putty" to come up and it just... it never did. I have to assume that somewhere on the editing room floor...
and “nards” im dying for a nards counter
Back in the '90s, when the SUV started to really take off, cars went from having angles and lines to just being lumpy round things. Color is just a continuation of the gradual metamorphosis into silly putty.
“Lumpy round things” I love how simple yet true this is 😭
I think it's an attempt to make cars as unoffensive as possible. No sharp edges, no wacky shapes, the same colors, and now dulling out the paint. Almost every car looks the same? Yeah, that's the point. That's the shape and look of cars that statistically sells the best.
Yeah older generation vehicles used to have much more distinct looks, and now every car looks basically the same (even color palettes across brands are nearly identical). It's sad to see as a car enthusiast.
There’s an art book I looked at in art school called Blobject
@@masonjohnson4310to be fair people buy what's available and what's affordable. It's not that puddy cars are more popular it's just what's available.
Thank you for this video. The same thought has plagued me for the past couple years, and I didn't know how to articulate the "feeling/sensation" of "knowing-but-not-understanding". You've released pressure that was hiding behind a valve I didn't know how to open.
The “Nard” colors have no depth to them; the metallic, pearlescent colors have a sense of dimension since the eye sees “layers” and sparkles in front of and behind each other.
On DipYourCar, they do some crazy stuff when painting cars
This is not Nardy, just a remark. In the early 70s metalic paint was new and very desirable. I had a 71 Pumpkin Orange Corolla that got rust fixed and I had it's color changed. I selected a Porsche color called metallic Anaconda Grey. It was an amazing upgrate to my college car. I wasn't Nardaconda Grey. 😂
This is how I describe it: it’s lacks dimension. It’s glossy, but flat. Not flat like matte, but lacking depth.
I disagree, unlike matte, I see lots of depth.
That was my first thought as well. However, whyy do the reds and yellows still look normal?
Hank, I think you've accidentally stumbled upon a fantastic format! I like you're capturing your entire research process to answer a question. I think it could be super useful as a way to exhibit how to use the Internet and sort through the firehose of information. Casual internet research is a skill I've found not many people have a great grasp of.
it’s really sad actually, even a previous commenter said “woah it’s so cool how you had this original thought and looked it up, finding out that there’s already literature about that!” but like you can do this with anything. almost 99% of the time you can look up an original thought that YOU had and the internet can back you up
I agree so much! Using the internet really is a skill and it’s sick for its to be presented here like this because we don’t really get to see examples from “skilled search engine users” that much and in such a raw way! Esp bc he succeeds so simply, all in one piece and we get to see the progression and that is really encouraging!! I could see this as a great classroom teaching video for online research (I am remembering now how many times he said “putty-looking ass whips” so hm.. maybe not lollll)
This!
@@jimjimsauce fr it’s so sad that people hardly do that anymore
I love this format too!! Please keep making this content Hank!
I LOVE this stream of consciousness style of video making. More chaotic Hank, please.
+
Very yes
Join Hank on his slow decent to madness.
I second that!
My D&D Character is going to be Chaotic Hank now. In both name and alignment.
This style of you investigating something you don't really have the expertise in, is actually so insightful.
This is the best part for me. You see he finds something related to his original incomplete thought, and just knows where to dig deeper. He gives credit to blackbird spy plane, sees the earliest mention of the color scheme and says yes yes no yes, and does the investigation himself on what he’s actually referring to. It’s awesome
Watching a 10 minute video of Hank talking constantly about nards is exactly what I needed today.
it makes him seem really out of touch with his subject matter :-\ Not what Im looking for from Hank.
@@CasperInkyMagoo he can't know everything about everything
I don't feel comfortable talking about Dahncke Nards.
@@CasperInkyMagoo he literally said he was that though. Cultural knowledge instead of active knowledge. He's only human, not a repository of all of the knowledge in the world.
@@Call-me-Al considering the intellectual aspirations he's after, flake in paint vs not flake in paint seems sort of..... stupid.
Its really simple.
Car dudes have been complaining about this Nardo Grayification for a few years now, but this is the most eloquent take I've seen. I do think there are two factors: the reactive and cyclical cultural component as you mentioned, but also something substantive in the design.
Mainstream car design has become visually much more complex in the past two decades: cars now have dozens of creases and cuts and body lines, are covered in plastic cladding pieces, with enormous grilles filled with ornate details. Meanwhile, the exteriors are covered in sensors, cameras, and other modern tech.
When car designs were more conservative and restrained, metallics would have the effect of emphasizing body lines and highlighting design details. This works beautifully on a car with a shape we already consider simple and beautiful, like a Series 1 E-Type or a C3 Stingray. But on today's cars, the move to nonmetallic paints has the opposite effect of hiding body lines and concealing styling details, perhaps dulling down a design we unconsciously acknowledge to be excessively complicated and overstyled, visually resimplifying it to its simple major shapes and silhouettes.
It's funny, because it seems that car design has had to _become_ visually more complex because the shapes of the cars themselves are becoming homogenized. Line up the compact SUVs or crossovers from a dozen different car companies and if you squint just a bit you can't tell them apart. Everything's just some form of blob. You've got your sedan blob, your CUV blob, your sports coupe blob, etc...
THIS THIS THIS THIS!!!!! complex paint and simple body vs complex body and simple paint. Personally, I like this trend in car design so much more then complex paint and body together. And it's so much better than our Grey black white colors that are everywhere.
I like the flat earthtones of some of these, but also the blue civic R is exciting with the flat paint. Having a pleasing, solid, and simple color really gives a punch of personality.
*an easy-to-digest yet striking personality, just like cars of yesteryear.
this is a fascinating take! i'm so far removed from Car World, so i had no idea about any of this, but the way you've explained it makes total sense to me
#deep
This is a fantastic crash course on "how to find out the answer to a question". Like, how to use google, asking different questions and phrases, how to follow sources, how to adapt if things seem contradictory.
(Also, yeah the nards do look weird)
I teach students critical analysis and research skills for a living and I could very well assign this video
I'm also a teacher, and I would love to assign this to my students for that exact reason, but I would need to censor it for my younger class 😂
"Crash Course"
Woah
“Please stop tagging me on TikTok and do your own research” lol
i read a book on how to optimize google searches so his web searching actually didn’t impress me. 😅
It's not just the color that matters, Hank. It's the saturation. The AMOUNT of color pigment in the actual paint coat also matters a lot more than people realize. More than that, car companies have also started cutting down on the amount of clearcoat they use. This ALSO reduces how wet and shiny a car looks. You can paint a car with two or three coats of identical (but desaturated) solid color paint, then give it two coats of clear. That's five total layers. That's the NORM now. Back then, it would be two layers of heavy color WITH another layer of flake AND maybe four or five coats of clear on top. You'd be looking at half a dozen to a dozen coats on the high end. Even today, Koenigsegg is an outlier - they do almost three DOZEN layers of paint.
I build and paint little table top gaming models and this is the exact color of unpainted models. We call it the "color of shame." It means you haven't painted your model yet. People are riding around what looks like an unfinished miniature toy.
This is what I always thought too!
YES. It’s a dollar store hot wheels vibe
Jesus you know it’s bad when the 40k folks dunk on you
Oh my god I love this.
😂
I used to work at an auto car wash and the first thing I thought when I saw one of the new 23' or 24' accords with the "nardo paint" was "why does it look like a stormtrooper?". When you mentioned stormtroopers I nearly jumped out of my seat.
Hahahaha! It really does look like that. That should be a legit paint name.
I used to work for Sherwin Williams Automotive way back in 2000. You'd be absolutely floored by how many greens and yellows and reds are in black or white paint. We'd add blue, green, yellow, and red mica (kinda like metal flake) to colors that had no business having them in there, like blacks. There are also additives that make colors look 'milky' for touch-ups on classic cars. I think the lack of these nuances is what is giving you these feels. I think they're just straight up single tone colors with a shiny clear over the top. There is also a theory that ALL companies chase the Babyboomers. From Gerber and Pampers for babies to Matel and Hasbro for children. Muscle cars for the late teens and early 20s. All the way up to now with hearing aids and luxury retirement homes. I think this is an attempt to give a modern car a 'classic' feel since those cars pre-date metalics and micas.
I used to work with auto paints too, there's alot more to matching and mixing than most people realise.
It's still a mix of pigments in these nardo style paints, just no pearl or mica.
It isn't until you start working with colour objects that you realize that even when you are buying a "neutral" colour you are almost never just getting something that sits on the gradient of black to white, there is always a bit of some other colours in it. Not to mention things like texture, lighting, angle, etc. can all make colours look more similar or drastically different. I've looked absolutely insane on dozens of occasions walking around with things while holding them up in different ways to get a handle on their colour.
"I think they're just straight up single tone colors with a shiny clear over the top"
remember how people were calling these colours "candy" ~15-25 years ago. because - well - it literally looks like candy, but rarelly in a good way
*Lamborghini* laid the groundwork for Audi to bring this to everyone else (Audi has owned Lambo since the late 90s). first, they came out with the Murcielago LP640 in like 2006, and the colour of the car in all the promo pictures was a glossy grey, which highlighted the crazy lines of the thing. it looked like a friggin' weapon. then they had other models (Gallardos, iirc) come out in army green, tan, brown or whatever, and then came the Murcielago LP650 Roadster, which was *only available in grey with orange trim.* look it up. Audi wasn't first. I was very into cars at the time and these things were my favourites.
Well, the boomers are the only ones with any friggin money, to be fair. So it makes sense every company tries to advertise towards them. Plus they were the last generation to live all the way into adulthood without the Internet opening up access to culture(s) from all over the world, hence why we still constantly hear popular music from the 60s-70s, it was the last like truly universally accepted music before people's tastes began to atomize
Ive always enjoyed seeing nardo color cars as i drive around. Been driving a yellow supra for the last couple years and when you mentioned nardo yellow looks good i had to pause the video, run out to my car, put my face on it to get a real close look at the yellow paint job, and then snort laughed when i realized i have a nardo yellow car. Idk why it never registered to me but this made my day.
btw, Nardo (grey) is named after the Nardo Ring Test Track in southern Italy. Originally built by Fiat, it is now owned by Porsche which is, like Audi, part of Volkswagen
This was my exact thought, and I'm guessing he didn't know about the test track.
Volkswagen is owned by the Porsche family, it’s crazy that most people still don’t know this
One country and four car brands later, I'm more confused than when I started.
@@Fractured_Unity Sort of, you aren't wrong enough to say you are wrong, just not very "correct" either. They currently own 42.6% of the company, with stock options for another 31.5 % more.
@@dreadus8125 The legal limit in Germany BTW. Because Germany don't play when it comes to publicly traded companies.
I love this “Hank is curious about something and takes us on a journey to learn it with him”. I want more of this, please, Hank!
I couldn't wait until the end- BUT HANK DONT YOU KNOW ABOUT THE GLITTER SHORTAGE!?! THERE IS A SHORTAGE IT STARTED A FEW YEARS AGO!!! LOOK AT THE GLITTER DRAMA!!! That is why we have so much clay!!! It's cheaper than the glitter!
😮 finally, my dreams have come true
BOOST!
Yes I remember hearing about this on TT like 2-3 years back.
+
To quote Neil Innes, there's an everything shortage. Lie down and be counted.
Thank you so much for talking about this!!! I’ve been wondering about this for months and any time I’ve tried to bring it up with someone they had no idea what I was talking about. It’s like a creme nail polish instead of metallic nail polish. One day all the cars were just suddenly not sparkly and no one other than you is talking about it!!!
Metal flake creates highlights and shadows that accentuates lines, plain gloss obfuscates those lines and the color seem to flow evenly over the curves. Creates a wet (soft) rather than crystalline (hard) look.
It looks more like the paint on police cars (OVER the original paint).
Yes, the contrast of highlights and shadows is higher in the metallic flake paint--there's a wider color value range. There's less contrast in the perceived colors on the nardo cars because of the reduced light reflection.
Well said. I still think they look like they have been dumped in a big vat of resin.
Hank my beloved, in the nail polish community we call ‘nardo’ a CREME finish. Most older cars would be referred to as a satin/pearl finish. Thanks SimplyNailLogical lol
I THOUGHT THE SAME THING!! Like, as soon as he showed it, I thought, "That's just creme." LOL
Satin is like a blend of matte and gloss.
Pearl has an iridescent quality, you might even say it sparkles but it doesn't have flakes. That's metal flake.
You are all missing the most basic way to describe this: it's flat. Flat gloss. The color is flat, but after a few layers of clear coat, you get the gloss. But the color itself, it's just flat.
The funny thing is, Cristine got her start with colors/painting at her dad's auto body shop dealing with car paint! Hank should contact Simply to get her opinion on this trend!
It would truely be a fantastic collaboration -- two curious, data-crunching, awesome people!! Hank, talk to Cristine about this!!!
Now I just want to cover them in flakey holo. 😂
The bolder, brighter colors don’t look as weird because the intensity of the colors replaces the metallic sheen of the flake. It’s just less noticeable that something is missing.
Yup. It's when the color is desaturated (like you find in clays) to greyish that it's notable.
I think they also use color shift rather than plain glitter
Brighter colors also reflect light better. Bright colors basically do the opposite and mute the sparkles, because youre seeing so much light reflection already.
I once sat next to a"Color Consultant" who worked for the industrial paints division of something like Pittsburgh Paints. They were flying out to help Freightliner decide what colors they would offer the next year. They said that color consultants, as a group, worked at establishing color trends across all kinds of industries, from cars to home decor to clothes.
I love the way you just organically talk about this at the camera (not to the camera, but at the camera). It's such a relatable thought process. I've watched this video twice. Why? idk. I've never watched a vlogbrothers video twice.
It makes the experience seem very personal. Like, Hank's your roommate, just going off about some nardo-lookin' assed whip. Hard not to enjoy that. :D
My boyfriend and I, a few months ago, driving around Utah, kept seeing "milky" cars. But yeah, the grey ones look like wet putty 100%! I love that we've all noticed this and pondered it. Like you said, we have this background knowledge we didn't even know we had!
this video made me think of football helmets, there was a huge matte craze about ten years ago (compare minnesota vikings old helmets vs new), and of course the big chrome/mirror phase (notre dame, oregon ducks), and I always liked the washington state gray helmets, they are super nardy
MILKY YES
We call them "latte" cars, so...
Milky was exactly how I described it too!
I have always heard it referred to as "toddler gray", as in, my kid mixed all the colors together and now everything is gray.
I’m so glad I got the opportunity to witness one of my favorite internet people explore a question which I, an extremely LIGHT auto enthusiast, have been asking myself for years now, and finally have the answer to! I remember like two years ago looking at the new Toyotas, thinking “wow those are some cool colors, why do they look so different?” And then very soon after seeing them come from multiple different manufacturers. Now I know why!
Also, that little bit around 3:25 about motion smoothing making everything look like Spanish soap operas was SO REAL and something else I’ve thought about subconsciously, and I will be expecting another video about that phenomenon shortly 😂
My suspicion is that adding flake to cooler and desaturated colors was common to make them seem less plain, to look cooler and stand out a little more, while bright warm colors like red, yellow, and orange didn't really need that, if anything if you took an orange car and added metallic flake it'd be like over-the-top "WHOA THIS THING IS COPPER". So now that the flake is trending away, seeing those bright warm colors without flake is unsurprising because that's always been a thing, but the cooler and desaturated colors are like "huh, this is a little… plain? flat? what is missing here?"
This is my initial thought as well. Hot colors already pop on their own, no flake required.
I want a copper color car now tho
@@aaronmacaroniCadillac has a nice copper color
In Sweden I've seen a bunch of orange Metallic cars lately, and my parents have a red Metallic car. All new of course. Neither of which I saw often 5-10 years ago. So I think the trend might be working both ways! Just waiting to spot a bright yellow Metallic car now lol
As someone who’s been surrounded by car culture my whole life, the metallic / metal flake being in most car paint is something I didn’t even realize other people weren’t aware of.
It's one of those things people like me don't notice until it's not there anymore.
Yeah I was like wtf is this video even about… they paint is just color with no flake… why is that profound?
How can so many people have never looked at, asked about, or been told the names of the paint options? In brochures? On a "build your car" website? For decades most of the names ended with "metallic."
@AtomicBuffalo it makes sense particularly in light of that, that it's time for something new. There have been eras of more flake, and less flake, and I guess they went as far as they could with the edgy and futuristic metallic colors, and so now the new thing is flat cremes. I think they tried matte for a hot second but nobody liked those. It needs to look clean and polished still. And in 20ish years, we'll start seeing metallic again.
As for why it looks different visually, the highlights and shadows aren't as pronounced. 😊
@@EmpressLizard81 Oy, the matte look was mercifully brief. I think it had something to do with the development of the market for wraps.
Videos like this are why I love Hank Green. I mean he's great in tons of other ways too. But this? Perfect.
he's talking like a child about a very basic topic he doesnt grasp. thats your hero?
@@CasperInkyMagoo 🤓
@@CasperInkyMagoo yes! Thinking like a child is probably the reason behind so many scientific discoveries. Re-discovering the world with a naive mind (at first, then cleverly digging) is probably what made Einstein discover gravity!
@@CasperInkyMagoo the joy of learning? Yes, absolutely.
The first car color that struck me this way was VW’s “Aquarius Blue” used on Beetles starting in around 2003. A light grey-blue that’s different to anything I’d seen before. No metallic or pearl at all, can’t tell if it’s grey or blue, but so appealing I have to stare at it every time I see it.
I buy the whole primer story. I work in paint shops for various car companies ( I program paint booths). When I saw this trend, I immediately thought of primer. Most if not all cars are primed before the main colour is added. Primed cars have a flat colour with no depth or metal flakes, and if you add a clear coat, the colours usually become glossy. These cars look like they skipped the main colour and were just primed and clear coated.
Totally. The funny thing too is that you can now go and get a matte clear wrap to turn your gloss car flat, which looks pretty sick on the right car. Ironically, I like the nardo trends, I like the matte wraps, and I like a primered rat rod, but I very much didn't like when Mercedes and BMW tried to offer matte factory paint - that didn't work at all IMO.
As a guitar refinisher, I am pleased to see my kindred spirits in the comments: model painters, nail art enthusiasts, and of course, car geeks. One of the things that others have mentioned here: metallics, particularly the translucent metallics that are so popular on automobiles, are both costly and difficult to spray. There is the additional problem of having to run metallics and flat gloss finishes on the same production line- a single drip or swirl of leftover metallic flake from a sprayer on to a flat gloss finish might ruin the product at the very end of the production process, where the loss is most costly. I think the reason you see flat red, yellow, white and black as "normal" car finishes has to do with those formulations being historically popular- old Ferraris and Porsches, yellow NYC Taxis (those might actually have some pearlescence to them now that I think about it), and of course flat white and black automobiles of all stripes (pun not intended).
As a car enthusiast, I love getting non-enthusiast takes on this. Another factor that plays into the "just hip enough" aspect, is that while manufacturers choose the colors to produce, dealers often choose the colors they will order for their allocations, and dealers want safe sales. Black, white, and silver are "safe" bets for them because a wacky color example of a car might sit and take longer to sell. This reinforces the trend toward grey tones and becomes self-fulfilling, but then manufacturers look for other ways to stand out, and you get the just hip enough gloss variations.
Personally, I love the gloss blues like that Toyota 4 Runner example. That might be one of the best colors in all of cars right now.
I got a car in 2022, when new cars were not sent out to dealers unless ordered, so I actually got to choose the color of my car straight up and didn't have to pick from their current options on the lot (which were none). So now I have a nice, blue car that doesn't look like putty cuz it's got FLAKE. And I get compliments on it! Because it's not black or gray or white, it's *different,* and people don't expect it.
@emmarabenhorst3106 yeah I think a lot of people would benefit from a shift toward more order-and-wait style car buying but many are still tied to the drive-it-home-today model. I went through this when I was buying my jeep because I wanted a particular trim package with a manual transmission. Dealers feel about manuals the same way they feel about vibrant colors, so I was prepared to order it but it happened that one of the 5 in the whole country that matched my criteria was "only" a couple hours away from me so I made the drive to get it.
Nobody remembers that flat or matte cars are just purposeful take on the primered cars that people drove without painting.
Many colors look weird now because every vehicle has been a version of metallic silver for 20 years. You used to could just get smurf blue or purple cars and trucks. Dodge and Ford have leadfoot and destroyer gray that I call cartoon gray because it looks like a throwback to old cars.
I like some of the more muted nardy colors happening lately, especially the two blue-green hues Ford primarily markets the Maverick with
@@jceggbert5 Have you seen those dealerships that take new slightly lifted regular cab 4x4s and gives them two tone paint and white spoke wheels and makes them look 70s or 80s models?
I swear, the reason I love you so much is that you have this enthusiasm which is the same enthusiasm I get when I research something for writing. Right now, I'm enamored with 1750's Iran because no one else has been? Why is this a forgotten history segment? It's fascinating.
Also, when I was a tiny and my mom took me to car shows, I loved the cars that were just primer, I just wished they were glossy like other cars. Go figure it would be another *coughthirtycough* years until I saw my dreams come true.
And now, I want a green car because everything is black/white/gray 😅
if i was still a school librarian, i would assign this video to show how the research process goes. just a joy to watch. also, this reminds me that we don’t know where most of the glitter manufactured in the world goes, but some of it goes into car paint!
I think it goes to radar chaff!
Please do. For their sake. I write technical documents at work. I'm only in my mid 30s. The amount of gray hair I'm literally accumulating from the lack of basic research skills and self-help being the last thought they have is.... It makes me sad. Like, they hired a bunch of helpless puppies that have never encountered Google in their lives. I really feel bad for them, because no wonder many of them are struggling in certain areas of basic life skills. Adulthood is not going to be kind to them if they are unable to even have basic research abilities to teach themselves anything.
@@Chimerapulse i'm no longer in that field, unfortunately.
THANK YOUUUUU for making this video! These flat color cars have been bothering me for a while! My mom bought a blue SUV that is definitely a nardo, and I havent gotten used to it even after several months. And yet they had a white SUV that has no flake or glitter, but it doesnt feel weird. My sister's yellow car is also flat and doest look weird. But that blue suv is almost uncanny.
Please I want sparkly cars back!
key her car then she have to change the colour
I never seen that colour in that finish before in cars so It's like seeing new colours.
Yes! Thank you! Sparkly cars, please!
I'm with you there. I want my little ford focus to be visible on the road, and therefore sparkly, not dull pavement color.
Little side note here, I like it when cars have excess sparkles, to the extent that it appears to be different colors from different angles. My sister has a very sparkly Honda, and it looks gray from some angles and green from others. That's not an effect you can get with nardo cars.
God bless, and may you always have sparkles in your car paint :)
I have a hunch that flat yellow doesn't look weird because you're used to seeing it - think school bus, ambulance, construction equipment, taxi... And when metallics were extra hip, yellow wasn't (cool silvers, not warm golds and coppers)
I literally had the same hyper fixation 3 months ago and literally read those specific reddit posts this feels so gratifying.
When the stars align and the same flavor of autism hyperfixation hits more than one person
Cool vid, cool energy:) subscribed!
Dude, I've been noticing the SAME thing about colors, and had the same difficulty articulating what I was noticing. THANK YOU FOR SCRATCHING THAT ITCH IN MY BRAIN!
Thank you Hank. I've been driving around for ages wondering why so many cars have not been finished. They look like someone started a total respray, but stopped after the primer. Now I know it's not just me. 😊
This! This is exactly what I've been thinking. Thank you.
Usually people figure out everything they're going to say *before* they record their content, this guy takes you on the journey with him - love it!
I love this style. The old days of UA-cam was more like this vs the overly edited and perfectly presented versions we have today
Tried to like your comment twice.
Being a life long car guy, I REALLY appreciate that you actually went through everything from the start. Yes it's all in the "finish" satin is a somewhat "semi-matte" just kinda spreads the shine across the surface. Matte is obviously no gloss whatsoever. Metallic has been played with since "candy" paints in lowrider/hotrod culture. I could literally go all day. Paint is absolutely wild man, I thank you for allowing me a video to spread around 😂
Someone else has probably said it but you are talking about specularity. The tightness of the reflection blobs is the difference. “Classic” paint has a large white reflection of white light, and the putty cars have tight tiny white light reflections. It’s a concept commonly used in 3D
This is an underrated comment
You're actually talking about smoothness/roughness, not specularity. All clearcoated paintjobs are very smooth, they have a near-mirror finish, with tight specular highlights. The matte cars (and water bottles he mistakenly showed as examples of "nardy") have broad highlights and the reflections are very diffuse (same thing: they're microscopically rough and scatter reflected light)
Flake is a trick that does both things: you have a mirror finish with tiny highlight on the top clearcoat layer, but under it you have a random distribution of little mirror flakes at different angles (and possibly different colors) that creates a second wide specular highlight (that's likely tinted) to really accentuate the angle between the light and the surface. Literally highlights the curves.
Without the flake you still get the reflections (unlike a matte finish) but you're missing the broad highlights we're used to lately.
Whatever it is, it’s not for me.
I think the reason nardo doesn’t look weird for some bright colors is just that those colors have been typically nard for longer. If you look at yellow cars at least for my entire life, they’ve never been metallic. Same for orange and bright greens. If you google ‘yellow car 2005’, most of the images will be nardo cars, or at least less metallic than cars of other colors from the era.
Idk m8. I drive a 2008 cobalt in yellow and it def has metallic flakes. It really is just less noticeable if you're not RIGHT up on it
Also brighter colors have more room for specular variation as the light angle changes. Putty colors just look like putty until they're in full shadow.
As a scale model builder, I will say that if you paint your model car with gloss grey paint, people will look at it and go "Why didn't you paint your model, it still looks like plastic". Whereas if you use a metal flake paint people will say "Man! That looks so REAL!" So when my wife and I started noticing the Nardo colored cars we thought that they looked like unpainted plastic model cars. We are not a fan of the trend. But absolutely if we see the non-flake red, yellow, black, or white, it looks just fine. Thanks for making this video, it answered a lot of questions we had about this weird-ass-paint-color trend.
I prefer the non flake, don't know why, not a fan of sparkle
@@fireice8828I prefer matte 🤷♂️
@@andrej2375that’s interesting because the paint that the video is about is almost like a glossy matte
@@LordSeth-hf8ew yeah, but it's nevertheless glossy
funny enough, a lot of car enthusiasts say that Nardo grey looks like primer with a clear coat.
THANK YOU!! Since I started noticing this car color trend I've been trying to describe it and was using "matte/flat" even though I KNOW it's not actually matte, it's shiny, and it has become a thing that lives rent free in my brain. My aunt has the flat light blue-gray Honda CRV. Why does my brain hate it/latch onto it?!!!!? THANK YOU!
Also this made me think of the shiny/sparkly teal blue color that was so on trend in the 90s (I think?? time is weird now) that i remember loving and wanting, and thinking back to it now, if you saw a car that color in a movie it would 100% be an intentional decision to drive home the era being the 90s (or whatever). Wild.
omg the nailpolish car color THANK YOU!! i was going nuts noticing this everywhere i go
i've never seen someone with grey nailpolish, or ocre, or pastel green.... i don't get why people call it this. It's one of the last connections i would make...
@@DrTheRichnail polish exists in all colours
@@DrTheRich Hi. Nail tech here. "Nardo"-type colors are very much "in" right now, too, and have been for a few years. I'm currently wearing a light putty-looking blue as I type this.
I could not for the life of me put my finger on what was bothering me about all the car colors BUT NOW I CAN! Thank you Hank!!
I think the "Just Hip Enough" theory is mostly whats going on here. Never really gave it much thought but it makes sense. Manufacturers for years usually just produced your basic 5-6 colors and then the premium colors were so insanely retina assaulting that people dont want to drive it. My dad got the 4Runner in the new Underground and it looks sick but not too flashy.
It seems to be part of the larger trend of everyone gravitating towards neutrals in everything from home design to even children’s toys. I’ve heard people say things like “bright colors assault my eyes” and “color makes things look cluttered and it overwhelms me”. So maybe it’s all coming from us being in a state of overwhelm and wanting our environments at least to be calming in as much as we can control them. Minimalism ties into it too, I think.
It's always sort of pissed me off that the basic low end car colors are night, pavement, fog, and snow.
You're going insane. These colors are beautiful!
This should be shown as an instructional video for how to research! He generates multiple search phrase combinations to find any useful information. Then, he immediately finds a second source and tries to verify the first one. Then, he checks the source of the article, and further verifies the other two. And finally, he forms his own opinion based on his own observations and how they relate to the new info. Very cool to see how naturally it comes to Hank from all his years of experience researching stuff.
There would be far fewer flat-earthers and Q-morons if everybody was this diligent about "doing their own research".
This "I wanna buy something but don't stand out" is also why in men's section in clothing stores, it's all grey, black, blue, red, and white, in that order, with one forest green hoodie and exactly one orange shirt if you're lucky. I buy almost exclusively "forbidden" colours, especially purple, magenta and pink. I like to stand out. I WOULD buy an orange car.
Interesting, but there are different reasons for those things I believe. The car colors thing is more about getting pulled over. Red/ flashy cars are statistically more likely to get the cops attention I think. (Haven't checked my stat knowledge so take it with a grain of salt).
I don't think that's the reason, white and black clothes cut a more flattering silhouette. Some people are confident enough to wear a bright shirt that highlights all their body's imperfections, but most people don't want to subject themselves to that.
Drive your grey car to your grey house with the gray flooring...
@@supernova622with your gray cat and gray walls and gray phone. Not to mention your gray bed and your gray couch
@@BassLiberators I don't think green or purple show more imperfections than red or white.
Looks like thermal paste
YES!
Yep! also looks like primer to me
That's the connection I couldn't quite make!
sadly it won't fit in my PC case 😔
Oh my god yes
This is so satisfying. I’ve noticed this trend like crazy too and couldn’t articulate it. Excellent work.
Nard nerd here 👋
I just had this conversation yesterday in someone’s car (yes my phone was listening). I was theorising that this aesthetic might be coming from the familiarity we now all have with the look of raw CG renders, now that 3D printing is commonplace.
It may not be a direct lift from this digital look, but I think it’s definitely an influence. There’s even a 3D sculpting program called PUTTY 3D.
On the issue of some colours looking more “nardo” than others. These “new” colours are not only devoid of metallic flake, they’re also all opaque, seeming to have a higher than usual white content in the mix. Grey and cool colours look the most nardo because they’re low frequency so the pigments don’t overwhelm, or cut through, the white content, which makes the colour look sort of inert and wetly trapped under a layer of gloss. Warmer and brighter colours may have a similar white content, but the higher frequency pigment either overwhelms or at least balances out the milky flattening effect. White doesn’t look nardo because we expect white to contain… um… white.
That, combined with the lack of subsurface light scattering from the metallic flake normally suspended in car paint, makes the colour appear shiny yet dimensionless.
They are looking less weird every time I see them… and that’s how eras form aesthetically 👀
This is basically what my sister told me, she knows nothing about cars or colors, but when I asked her why these new colors look so creamy, she was like "They probably mix more white into them."
@@ashproductionswell she was spot on 😂
I was gonna say the same thing. They kinda look like video game cars. Also it looks more like smooth plastic than puddy to me
Funny thing is, there is nothing new about this. Google "grey ford model A" and you see cars looking exactly like this. Non metallic, flat grey with a thick non transparent layer of paint.
Just old trends recycled.
btw technically you're incorrect about the lack of subsurface light scattering. Because it's exactly what makes this effect. It's just that the mechanics are different.
Pure metal on it's own does not have sss, because it reflects 99.5% of light. And non metallic always have some level of sss. If you put metallic flakes suspended in a non-metallic substance though, the metallic flakes bounce the light around more directionally inside the material giving you a different effect than a pure metal surface, or a pure non-metal surface.
Non-metal surfaces like flat paint, or plastic, have a totally diffusive sss creating that matte feeling even if the surface is shiny and glossy.
Hank the organization of this video feels like I'm sitting with my older brother at the family computer going down random Internet rabbit holes, this was wonderful thank you 😂😂
THANK YOU HANK GREEN! I have been freaking out about this to everyone I know for months and no one else seems as freaking out about it as much as I am. I’m glad I’m in such good company.
Is…..is this an autism thing?
Same! I thought I was going crazy
Me too!!
this is absolutely not something to freak out about, but i relate. lol
SAME. My first vehicle was a gross brown Ford from the 80s. This feels like such a giant leap backwards.
4:15 I love that feeling when you're trying something just for the heck of it knowing it's not gonna work, and then the realization, that it, it somehow worked
I'm facinated with Hank's hair. Chemo be giving free perms!!!
Exactly!
Chemo curls are wild
“free” 😂😂
@DeadBore maybe they're not in the US
Right?! I clicked on the video because the car colour really interests me. But Hank's curls are just fascinating to look at when you're used to seeing him with straight hair.
Like any trend those colours instantly communicate “new” which helps make the metallic old cars feel old. Driving sales. However the trend will fall hard I suspect after a few years and become dated.
I dunno, car culture for a long time has been chasing things like this. This might be the final form. It saddens me, but…yeah.
I have a suspicion that they’ll look dirtier and have more visible scratches. One of the reasons you have the metal flake and stuff is because it makes unevenness less visible. It’s the same reason why so many people often have a problem with getting white or black cars - you notice EVERYTHING on them.
@@TDownit_StriderI really think the whole point is there IS no final form. For stuff to look new it has to look different so it will never stop.
Which is also super interesting. How amazing is it that we can collectively point to something feeling old. Outstanding pattern recognition. And then we can also collectively point to something that's so old it's cool again. It's an ominous culturally connected feeling
The same thing is happening with kitchens too. I helped my parents design a kitchen 20y ago, and then it was all about wood-effect plastic wrapped cabinets with granite tops. Now granite is 'old fashioned' and cabinets are flat grey or f'n milk paint colours. Like how is this in any way an improvement?
Those flat (no sparkle) colors were common in the 70s and before. The first time I saw a sky blue car of this type of color, I was immediately reminded of my dad's truck from about 1970. I love the new flat colors, especially the blue shades.
Exactly what my brain needed on this!! I have been trying to explain this color to people and I COULD NOT, now I can 😊! Thank you!
I'm laughing hysterically, imagining what the uncut footage of this ordeal of discovery must have looked like. Mad props to Milo for editing it down to what's a surprisingly coherent narrative.
The thing you said about motion smoothing is so accurate. My uncle and aunt are upper middle class and had a 4k TV well before any other family members did. When we went for Christmas one year, they had on NCIS, a show that my parents binged and I was very used to seeing. The details and the fact that it looked so real actually took away some of the immersion for me. It was like I could see the makeup, the lighting, and the fact that it was a staged shot. It is incredibly hard to articulate exactly why though, that's just my best attempt. Very much an uncanny feeling
the first time i saw a 60 fps movie i really hated it
It just looked... actually fake even though it should be more realistic
@@ayoCC interesting, I've heard a lot of people say this because they're used to it. On the other hand for me movies often seem so stuttery if they have a low framerate :(.
I know this is a unique example but for animated shows/films if they do a certain low framerate style (they do it on purpose for nostalgia or convention like movies do) like in Spiderverse or in "The Dragon Prince" I find it incredibly difficult to watch. In the dragon prince it even looks like the facial expressions are at a different framerate and the body movements are lagging and even tho I was enjoying it it kept pulling me out of the story. I haven't even tried to watch spiderverse all the way thru yet just from seeing clips online, though I eventually will.
That's why when everything started switching to HD I just stopped watching tv and movies. That and the fact there's nothing made that's worth getting my money anymore.
I love videos where someone searches through google, it’s like hanging out with a friend doing the same thing
I need such friends!
my first time coming across such videos, defo wont be my last…he earned a subscriber
Never thought i needed it but now i want more!
or with someone who didn't research before hitting record 😅
I saw the title of your video some months ago but I didn't watch it. Then I started actually noticing many cars that looked like putty around me and I kept thinking "I have to watch that video to find out why!". Thanks then, it was a good find
I think the uncanny valley factor might come from the fact that all the colours you mentioned looking weird, are (at least in my mind) METAL colours - even the blues and greens have that "oh this is metal" vibe to them. Which means, without the (well, metallic) sparkle they look weird. The vibrant colours though, we're used to them being non metallic so they don't seem weird without the bling.
OMG FINALLY! I’ve been talking about this for a years(?) now! I’ve always described it as putty or some even as “video game glitch-like” or “the texture hasn’t loaded yet” as some of the lighter colored ones reflect the sky/surroundings in a way that makes them almost just blend into the background.
Haha yes. I just commented that they look like video game cars from like 10 years ago (maybe 15 years ago at this point though) but I think your comment is slightly more accurate
Yeah they always look very "RTX off" to me.
Same but I've always described it as "pastel like"
The grey and putty colors remind me of filing cabinets. Offices used to have walls of them, and "Putty" was an actual color for metal office furniture. I think there are enough people young enough to have never worked in an office full filing cabinets that these colors look new now.
The grey colour reminds me of a dolphin or a whale
I have also referred to that mentally as “file cabinet color,” thought what it really reminds me of is industrial machinery that’s got that sort of opaque enamel with a gloss finish, usually on a kind of hammered-texture surface. It’s creepy and I hate it.
Right. I see them SUVs and I think big filing cabinets 😄
No I work in public schools. I specifically seek out black furniture for my room because I can't stand that gray. I never connected it to file cabinets. I thought of nail polish.
The energy of this video is exactly what I needed today.
As someone taking a computer graphics class, this relates to something my professor was talking about with materials and reflection. The "nardo" colors are extremely pure, with low specular and high shininess, so it looks like hard plastic, which is very different from the high specular reflection with low shininess that our brain expects from something made of metal
Yes! They remind me of Lego brick colours
Yes!!! In my head I referred to these colours as "flat plastic"
It's the WAY TOO MYSTERIOUS glitter shortage, Hank. You need to look into this.
Glitter shortage?
Also does this confirm that car paint is the single biggest client of glitter in the world and that they want to remain anonymous cause they don't want people knowing car paint contains glitter?
@@plazasta I thought that was with boat paint? Now I've got something to obsessively research after my errands today.
@@pup.piston it's with boat paint, it's just at one point people wondered if it was car paint and the main comment fit that old myth perfectly and I found it funny
@@plazasta Ah yeah that makes sense, and it is pretty funny to me bcs half of the people who would care about having glitter in their car paint don't want people to know it's glitter lol
@@plazastaI'm pretty sure someone came out with it being the military
I totally get this - they're flat colors that very much have white in the base color, and they definitely give weird lumpy vibes. I think we're used to being able to see the contours of a car from the way the light hits the metallic flakes in the curves, so the lack of that reflective quality makes it weird uncanny valley 2D strangeness. (Also this is my first time commenting on one of your videos so hi!!)
Edit: I think the strangeness is directly proportional to the amount of white in the base of the paint (so red and bright yellow are fine, but weird light orange is weird.)
I think you're really onto something here with the white content thing. But interestingly I think when things get suuuuuper pale and close to white, they start looking okay and non-weird again.
Yes, this exactly.
I love this video style. I noticed but never looked into it. I’m glad I know. Thank you!!
i am crying at work and watching this in the back and hank calling the color “nards” is really helping me feel better
I hope today is a better one
is there a hidden meaning in "nards"?
In the Helicon days of my youth, I worked on cars. Flat grey primer was generally the last primer coat before adding the final paint color. Some people didn't have a separate car to drive while fixing up the body and paint, so they drove the primer coated car around. That's what this "new" trend feels like to me. I do not dig non-metallic painted cars, but in general flat colors like white, black, red, yellow, orange or dark green or blue don't bother me, but the clay and putty colors remind me of those primer colored cars of old. Thanks for covering this topic, Hank! I've been spit balling the topic with friends and this helped.
That was my response to the appearance of this phenomenon: “Hey! Finish painting your car!”
And some people would just never paint them, and just drive around in their primered grey car
Agreed, that flat grey just looks like an undercoat!
Earl Scheib
*Halcyon
Had to come back to this video to say that now every time I see one of these cars in daily life, I hear a faint Hank voice saying "putty-ass whips" in my head.
Genuinely brings joy every time, thank you!
Hahaha yep, I just watched this and I KNOW that will happen to me too and I will also be saying it out loud to someone at some point who will be confused
New head cannon, lol
just resumed the video after reading this and his first words were putty ass whips lmao I'm in a simulation
yep, every single time, I see putty-ass looking whips everywhere I turn now
The first time I watched this video I had no idea what he was talking about, but now I can't stop seeing them.
FINALLY an answer to the question I've been wondering for so long. My older car is a simple silver from Honda, not a ton of flake, but definitely silver and not gray. Makes me think a little more about car color and how much flake matters. Personally, I love paint that has a pearl or flake to it. I always associated that with something being a little more premium, but maybe that's just my experience with guitar paint and drum wraps.
I love how connected you make us all feel. I had the same thought when I saw these Nardo cars thinking “well this is weird but why is it weird?”
And I left it at that. I love that you delved in deeper.
FINALLY. For years I have commented when visiting my dad that his TV looks like a Spanish Soap Opera and no one understood me. And I couldn’t describe why. I hadn’t heard of anyone else recognizing it, and it’s been so long, I was resolved that I’d never understand it. BUT YOU DID IT, HANK. Now I can learn all about motion smoothing. And to have it revealed to me the same day as the solar eclipse! How fancy.
Also neat about the putty whips.
10/10 Great video.
Specifically, I believe it is 60Hz (or even 120Hz upsampling). Try watching The Hobbit in its filmed 48fps and compare to the 24fps releases. The higher frame rate looks like behind-the-scenes of actors playing the parts, while 24fps looks like a glimpse into the alternate reality of the story.
It’s the frame rate, it makes it look live video instead of film
TV's come with all sorts of picture modes turned on by default. My first move with any tv is to go into picture and "extra" settings and turn EVERYTHING OFF. Digital smooth, dynamic contrast, de-noise, dynamic color, "real/smooth/ultra motion" etc. Each one *sounds* good by itself, but taken together they actually destroy detail and color. Turn it all off and then very selctively turn a few up them up (maybe low instead of off on contrast enhancement). Even better if you do it with a piece of content you're familiar with so you know not only if it looks right -- but if it *looks wrong*. Enjoy your TVs again
(and yes i do this when I visit friends and families houses -- people that don't notice, won't notice that it changed, and people that do notice will never have their eyes burned)
There’s tons of videos out there on this “soap opera” effect. Turn off the motion smoothing feature on your tv and it fixes it 👍🏻
People got used to most film and television being at 24 fps or 30 fps and Spanish soaps and sports being at 60 fps. Switch them around and it feels wrong. Even though technically, higher frame rates are superior.
I worked at a car dealership 2017-2019 and they started experimenting with these colors. I checked in new cars and put them in the system as well as put them on the lot. I remember telling my boss that I couldn't "check in the cars that look like earth because they make me nauseous". I'm glad I'm not the only one so unsettled by them!
🤣 That's hilarious and I completely agree! They gross me out!
@@Colley_cothey really do!!
They give me the heebiejeebies!
I described looking at them as the same as sitting on a warm public toilet seat.
I find these muted car ( especially the gray tones) blend into the landscape background making it harder to see due to the lack of contrast between the vehicle and the environment. Anyoe else?
I needed this so much Hank. Thank you for the deep dive I would have never been able to articulate something solvent.
I "get" the "clay" sensation, but to me, it looks like a fresh crayon.
YEAH! Fresh Crayon!
Not crayons that have been dumped into the bin, mind you. Right out of the package, from the factory, open for the first time in all their Crayola glory. Fresh crayons
I get what you mean but my very first impulse was to wonder how large a part of your diet crayons were.
😊
@@JeffertoyaHey man, don't be harsh on Marines...
I always called it "candy colour" and for a long time this was even exactly how this colour was called by people, painters and tuners.
Oh my God! I've been obsessed with this for months.
I'm not sure why, but these colors creep me out.
Thank you!
YES! I can't explain why either, but seeing these cars that look like they've been painted with friggin' house paint is super disorienting to me while I'm driving! Drives me bonkers!
I hate how hard they are to see in the fog. I don't think you should be able to make a matte fog colored car. Seems like you're asking for someone to hit you
These have been weirding me out for years. They started showing up before the pandemic even. I’ve been struggling ever since to express what it was about them…so I could ask others if they’d noticed them and whether they found them unpleasant to look at too…but this is the first time I’ve heard anyone else ask this or even seem aware that they’re out there, just driving around in plain sight. Finally, I know for sure I’m not crazy. They’re a real thing, and, yes, they’re weird.
As a car enthusiast and automotive engineer, I enjoyed watching your journey of discovery down this rabbit hole of putty-looking ahh whips. "Just hip enough" is indeed the most complete answer to your question. People want to blend in at a glance, but stand out if somebody's actually paying any attention to them. My understanding of the history is that putty-looking colours were cheaper to make in the 50s and 60s (one could skip adding the metallic flake and in many cases even the glossy clear-coat), so I imagine it later went out of fashion due to the image of being basic and uninspired. Then as the vinyl-wrapping industry kicked off in the early 00's, somehow the washed out greys were rediscovered by enthusiasts looking to change up the colour of their vehicle. Car companies saw this uptick in popularity and decided to join the bandwagon, offering pastelle colours from factory. On smaller sportscars this can look like you're driving a crayon, while on larger SUVs it's more of a tacticool gun-looking finish. Young people seem to love it, while the older ones still remember the multiple fashion waves before this and mock the putty colours by saying "did you pay extra for the dealership to leave your car in primer?", as if they didn't bother applying any colour at all, just a protective primer layer and that's it. Personally, I love seeing the magic of a good metallic flake in a paint, as it's more of a dynamic colour depending on the lighting conditions.
YES! Like driving a crayon. That's exactly how a Camry looks with this paint job.
Primer is exactly what it looks like to me.
I personally don't like shiny cars so I'm not against "putty" trend 😅
But we didn’t have grey cars so much in the 50s and 60s. They were pastel blue and yellow or red, black, and white.
Excellent informative and entertaining video, you are firing on all cylinders!! ❤️